The Square.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19200, 5 January 1928, Page 6

The Square.

The letter which we printed yesterday from Mr George Gould was the first public protest against the Mayor's attack on the Board of Health for refusing to sanction a loan for Square " improvements.'' Mr Archer had suggested, very improperly, that " private " or semi-private influences " had been "allowed to override the decision of " the elected representatives of the " people," and it was necessary to say very plainly what the real facts are. The Board's action was not in the least degree " inscrutable" to people of good taste, and since the Minister.seems to have given some kind of an undertaking to reconsider the application after New Year, the danger has not vet passed. Mr Archer no doubt believes that a body like the Board of Health should have only a formal discretion; that when the " elected " representatives of the people have spoken the " appointed " representatives should not ask any further questions. But even if the position were as simple as that, the Mayor's attitude would be difficult to understand. For Mr Archer is not an ill-informed man, nor an illinformed Mayor, and on questions like the beautifying of the City and the honouring of fallen soldiers he can be trusted to look above and beyond the heads of most of his followers. On the hoardings question he has been a

stout fighter (in occasionally tight comers) for civic decency and dig-nity, and he would not have found the Board's conduct inscrutable if he had realised that what is "behind this " refusal" is simply a bigger and more solemn mass of objections than he himself has to street advertising. The Square ought to be the civic centre only in the best sense. It was never intended to be either the traffic, or the trading, or the amusements centre, but a place in which citizens would get the strongest impression of the things that Christchurch really stands for. It would be quite horrible, if it ever came to pass, that a visitor should notice (first or before long) that Christchurch is a generous city sanitarily.